Forwarding an excerpts from what professor Jennifer Harman, Associate Professor of Psychology, Colorado State University shared on Linkedin August 25 2021 about 7 myths regarding domestic violence.

Recommendation: read it all!

Myth: Men can sometimes be victims, but most abuse is suffered by women in heterosexual relationships

Reality: The heterosexual pattern for perpetration is 50% bidirectional, 35% female unidirectional, and 15% male unidirectional. The most common pattern of violence is bidirectional perpetration, meaning both men and women perpetrate equally in both frequency and severity of the violence. Unidirectional then means one partner perpetrates more often and with more severe violence. The numbers show women abuse their male partners more (this applies to western countries, as non-Western countries have very different patterns). 

Intimate partner violence is the only area of violence that sees women being more violent than men, but this doesn’t mean women aren’t victims: they are. Same-sex couples experience similar rates of violence, but lesbians experience more partner violence than women in heterosexual relationships. Along with the bidirectional rates, this shows that the gender paradigm—men perpetrate violence to retain patriarchy and women only hit in self-defence—is simply not evidence-based.